Photographs… reckless!

The archives contain many photographs of groups: Jesuits, boarders of all ages, Marian congregations. The subjects are always arranged next to each other, in one, two, five, ten or more rows! Let’s read some background together…

In one of these photographs there are often even more than fifty subjects photographed, and the last row seems to be rather far away from the ground, see for example the photographs here, where the last row reaches the window of the first floor of the building.

Today, we tell a little backstory behind one of the many photographs that so often can be found in the folders and that make researchers who suffer from vertigo cringe.

Taking these photographs, especially in the last decades of the 19th century, was a real feat: cameras were cumbersome and required rather long exposure times, which could often result in peculiar effects in the final photo.

In fact, if a child had moved, his face could appear in the photograph without clear contours or even with two pairs of eyes, the effect of superimposition due to movement.

There are also a few similar cases in photos kept in the archives.

In the first decades of the 20th century, photography had certainly made great strides in technology, shortening exposure times, but it still remained an expensive resource.

In boarding school photographs of children, it was therefore necessary to take as few shots as possible, moreover, group photography of all classes was a tradition, an attempt was made to put the entire school population together in a single photo, which was a very difficult undertaking.

This posed a major problem: the large number of subjects to fit into one frame.

Between the Jesuits in the community and the boarders there were easily a few dozen people, if not a hundred, and it was unthinkable to put them in a single row.

So structures were built, probably temporary ones or reused ones intended for the theatre, to accommodate all the boys and fathers in height and allow them to be included in a single frame.

In the photo accompanying this column, dated 1928, a wooden structure can be glimpsed.

Let us move forward just a few years; it is 16 May 1933, in the Pius X Seminary in Catanzaro of the Neapolitan Province of the Society of Jesus, all the seminarians, fathers and authorities had been gathered in the seminary courtyard for the end-of-year photo.

Everything must have been ready for the shot when the wooden stage collapsed under the weight of the seminarians, as Father Meduri tells us, writing the caption of the photo.

According to the Jesuit, some of them also suffered injuries.

A second photo was then taken, the next day, and as Father Meduri points out, it shows traces of what had happened, one can in fact see a wounded seminarian with his head bandaged.

It was decided to abandon the high wooden structure, moving some of the seminarians to the balconies above the entrance.

We do not know if there were similar incidents on other occasions, but there are numerous photos of various seminaries, colleges and residences showing boys and Jesuits dangerously climbing over walls, columns and parapets.

For any further ‘tumbles’ … see you in future episodes.

Maria Macchi